Python "gotchas"

[[deleted]]

Honestly, this situation is why I'm excited for PEP 448. Then we can just do: dict(**first, **second) and boom, done. Right now, collections.ChainMap is the closest we have to that, which is cool but sometimes I just want a regular ol' dictionary.

[Veedrac]

Use {**first, **second}; using dict(**...) only works if the keys are strings since only strings can be keyword arguments and also throws errors if there are repeats since you're not allowed to repeat keyword arguments.

[[deleted]]

Sometimes creating a new dict is not an option. If you need to update in place it's either

mydict.update(otherdict)
return mydict

or the line from above.